DeliaIrisFan

These posts both speak to me. I was sad to hear of his passing, and I remember thinking Luke and his lore were cool when I started watching GH (as an adolescent who was not in any way cool). I missed what by most account what was the worst of Luke in later years. I did respect his supporting role in stories at times when he purportedly did not enjoy being on GH. I am remembering some of that now. The rape is hard to reconcile with that Luke, or with core characters I loved continuing to indulge him later on.

Anita's scenes today were really good, and TT will no doubt be amazing in this story. I don't love that they dropped that cliffhanger and didn't show her first reaction to the possibility of breast cancer was off camera. I hope the focus is on her from here on out. I'm torn because I would love to see Bill involved in politics and I want to see more of his dynamic with Martin, but on the other hand they clearly aren't going to be able to address what's actually happening. Martin's speechifying is some of the most painful dialogue this show gives us: partly because his political strategy usually sounds 10-35 years behind the times, and partly because it something my elected officials might say (except I don't think in private they act like they just realized last month there's a midterm election next year). And today didn't show signs of that changing. I find it hard to believe anything like the legislation discussed is going anywhere right now, or that Martin would be the deciding vote. Actually, I thought that Martin's congressional seat is supposed to be the Eleanor Holmes Norton DC (non-voting) district, or was that just something mentioned in reporting on the show before it went to air, like how Siobhan Ryan was off studying to be a nun when Ryan's Hope premiered? In any case, I do feel like it's been established on-screen that Joey should be buying a candidate in a swing district who has a sports betting problem. And Bill actually has a good reason to primary Martin (is that still what we're talking about?), of his own volition - if he claims the lane of the non-insider challenging the Dupree heir, as opposed to an actual outsider who wants to overturn tables, it would be mutually assured destruction as far as the Kenneth secret, which neither of them want to come out. And then Bill could end up winning while trying not to. Just my two cents.

Interesting to read the different takes on Winter Fest. I enjoyed much of the wardrobe and it was nice to see all the characters interacting in one space. I don't think it's a death knell for BTG that there wasn't more drama at the event. I do think WF exemplifies some of the ongoing issues with dialogue - for months, so many characters have been talking nonstop, often in extremely forced, unnatural ways, about the most minute details of past WFs. Nothing could live up to that hype. I'm also a white viewer grappling with the racial politics of this show, and truly hope I don't express this wrong and cause offense to anyone. I tend to think it's intentional on the writers' part that even the Duprees, as aspirational and powerful as they are supposed to be, are clearly not safe from white supremacy. And that career criminals who happen to be white are probably more likely to get away with everything than characters like Bill and Martin when they've crossed legal lines. I think it's valid (not that MVJ and her team need me to validate any of this!) to incorporate that tension into the fabric of the show. For me, Joey's characterization takes this concept too far because it's not just that he's an omnipotent criminal who gets away with it, but he's also supposed to be charming and brilliant and irresistible (at least to Vanessa). White privilege can get a two-bit thug pretty far, in DC no less, but I think we've seen in recent years that it doesn't make anyone genuinely want to be around them. Also the way Doug was written out makes it all too gross. I would say up until now there was humor in Hayley's dialogue, etc., but I thought after the revelation that she had been conning Bill the whole time, the show tried and mostly pulled off presenting her as formidable and savvy: the way she pegged how their relationship likely would have turned out the second she got a little older, that flash of anger at the thought of Bill going back to Dani before Hayley gets what she's worked for, etc. I was genuinely impressed with that character turn. This week did get too cartoonish for me: Hayley increasing the dosage with clearly no understanding of how the poison even works, and then calling Randy before 911 (and before checking Bill's vital signs, and then proceeding to give away the game when he could have come to at any moment). I can chalk these few episodes up to some bad scripts and breakdowns if the rest of the trajectory makes some sense. Bill is too integral to the show (and the core character have too much grudging respect for him) to have been so completely taken in by someone as incompetent as Hayley has acted this week. Awww I don't if I would put it quite that way, but I guess to an extent that's also true of the upper-crust main characters of other soaps. And for me Nicole has already made an indelible mark in that category. I'm not sure what to make of this latest turn in her love life, but I hope we get to see a daytime soap focus on a mature, intelligent heroine navigating relationship(s) for a while.

Thank you!

For once in a blue moon, I'm up to date on watching the show, and it's early enough in the month that I was able to catch up on this thread before the weekend was over. So I'm jumping in with a bunch of random musings. Winter Fest is not what I was expecting, but I won't write it off just yet: I was just relieved to see (halfway through the coming attractions, which really should have been in chronological order) that the event isn't completely over. I agree with parts of both of these posts. I have no interest in GH or any other of the remaining 20th century soaps. I will say some of these down times on BTG can start to feel like a chore for me, which in a way is a compliment, because I am already invested in some of these characters that I feel obliged to keep up. I maintain the non-event phases where characters not directly involved in each other's stories reconnect would be much more enjoyable with better dialogue. The exposition is sooooo clunky, and when we're bouncing back and forth between catch-up scenes... +1000 I feel so badly that by the time this show finally made it to air, it had to be in this moment. For a lot of reasons, but most relevant to this topic, I don't pretend to know how MVJ and Co. could effectively navigate the national and network politics. DC is a ****show and for probably multiple reasons they clearly can't say that in the script, and yet these characters are in the thick of it: some more so than others. Martin's character has really suffered from this, and that makes me sad because I really want to like him (and Martin/Smitty), but essentially every attempt to incorporate politics/reality has seemed behind the times or depressingly reminiscent of the headlines, or sometimes both all at the same time. Speaking of which... That's a good point that I hadn't considered. Although see above, re: keeping pace with the headlines - we've already escalated from arguments with anti-vaxxer relatives at Thanksgiving dinner all the way to RFK Jr. being in charge of U.S. health care policy. Why wouldn't the Duprees say something about that when discussing this topic at this point? It's also unfortunate that this isn't the first part of Chelsea and Madison's relationship that happened off-screen... I thought of Mac Cory as well. I've been struggling since the '90s to understand how a crowded restaurant scene is cheaper/more efficient for a soap to film than a comparatively smaller number of people on the set of the core family's home, and I still don't get it. At this point, I guess I can live with it. This reminds me of the story Patrick Mulcahey told in an interview about MVJ's only note on his first GH script: that Sonny wasn't smart enough for the extended monologue PM had written for the character... In some ways, Vanessa's arc with Joey is like Brenda on GH, if all of her stories from 1994 to 1997 (or possibly up until one of her later returns, which I never watched) were condensed into ~6 months, plus some of the subsequent Real Mob Wives of Port Charles's drama thrown in for good measure. She was so fun, and she became really draining, but we skipped the part where at least most of the journey made sense. Speaking of Vanessa, I'm sure this is old news but is Donnell just gone? If he was meant to be short-term, why didn't they cast Deanna(sp?) for the funeral as well? It made no sense that she wasn't there, but I assumed they wanted to leave a blank slate if and when they introduced her as a main character later on. And where exactly is Banneker supposed to be: Isaiah works there and is frontburner, but Vanessa's kids aren't around because they're "away" at school? In hindsight, I wish THAT secret had been the catalyst for Leslie/Dana and Eva infiltrating the Duprees. At very least, I think they could have pivoted at the time the original actor parted ways, and made Eva's paternity a red herring for the real revelation re: Barbara and the trust. To me, Ted has seemed aimless since the recast. Eva and Kat don't need to be sisters to have a feud, and Nicole had plenty of reason to be pissed at Ted over his role in keeping Martin's secret from her. If they really wanted to keep Ted around and even have him in the Thomases' orbit, they could have established that he did know Dana (not biblically) in the past and he could have befriended her and Eva.

I'm still loving this show, although I have been bad about keeping up with the episodes, let alone this board. This week I'm actually up to date on the show, and there's only 12(!) pages of this thread, so I figured I'd jump in before I fall behind. I feel like maybe they're starting to overcome some of the pacing problems. Or maybe it's just that enough of the show has been compelling for me lately and I'm just hoping they'll continue to keep those threads going. I do agree with what many have said about the dialogue, which has been my biggest disappointment. I don't watch B&B so my expectations were based entirely on MVJ's work on GH, where she wrote truly some of the best scripts in soap history. To be fair, I'm not sure how many from that team are still in the industry (Mulcahey seems to be really done?), and I don't want MVJ herself to be bogged down in editing every line, when the stories and characters need to capture an audience. All to say I get that she has to make do with who's left in the industry and/or train newcomers. I can deal with it, especially in weeks like last week when the stories really do work. Apart from the pacing, they've clearly started to reset some things, now that I presume we're seeing scripts and story projections informed by how the original vision has translated from page to screen. Much of that is probably for the best, even if a bit jarring, like Chelsea/Madison. I just hope they slow down with some of the soap cliches that I was happy to start a new soap fresh without: I hate the fake/temporary paralysis trope, which is not doing Ashley/Derek any favors, but also Eva having not one but too long-lost relatives in the Duprees' sphere is starting to catch up with the soaps that have been rewriting characters' family trees for decades now. I'm actually not entirely sure where they're going to land with the tone. Case in point: I could easily see Naomi's pregnancy ending in either a baby switch story with Hayley or Naomi having an abortion and that being that. I truly hope it's not the former, but in any case I actually am unable to predict what's going to happen next right now. Relatedly, it seems like the scripts seem to be de-emphasizing the political element, at least the day to day of DC in 2025, which is probably for the best (or should I say the least worst they can do) under the circumstances. Something like The Good Fight would not be sustainable on a daily basis, especially given the pace of the news cycle now even compared to the first Trump administration, not that there is any way CBS/Paramount's current owners would air that today. BtG is progressive in so many ways, not to mention a beautiful artistic creation for any time, and I want it to stay on the air.

What a week. I got behind later in the week, after taking off work for the premiere, but I'm all caught up and eager for Week 2. I don't know about the Dani shooting at the wedding, mainly because it makes me think of how AW wrote out Iris, but I very much doubt that is happening with this character so I am happy to see how it plays out. The gothic/thriller story they're setting up with Leslie/Eva could be really good - after the past 2-3 decades of soap rewrites by committee, I just hope it gets to play out as planned over what I presume would be many months. I'm starting to be afraid this is true, but it's still early. I'd like to think the actor will settle into the role. Wow... I love this. I can understands she's biased because she's hurt by what her friend and father did. I appreciated that what she said could apply to Bill and Dani. +100

I too am hoping this is intentional and there will be LGBT intimacy. I'm also not sure of their chemistry after this first episode, but maybe that too is deliberate. It is a little jarring given the "racy" intros some of the straight couples got, but as I mentioned in an earlier post, whatever Bill has on Martin gives me hope that the gays aren't going to be sanitized and boring. I did assume they were newer parents if the source of conflict is meant to be that the one is weary of being a stay-at-home parent unless there is some recent event that is giving him second thoughts: maybe even what Martin's Aunt(?) Dani just went through after giving up her career for Bill, and not wanting to end up in a similar position.

The discussion about the ages of the kids made me think of when it was Nurse Ashley's(?) turn for back story today, and she went on about how rough her mom must have had it as a "young mother." My first thought was how Dani and Nicole both look at least as young as the actress playing this character's mother, but maybe that's just me. On that note, they're also really going out of their way to let us know Anita and Vernon aren't THAT old. Today he made a point to say that MLK and John Lewis "came before" him, which while unnecessary was innocuous, but it reminded me of a line yesterday that I had meant to mention. Did anyone else hear Anita say the two of them met at THE (I swear, I heard "the") March on Washington, and then went on to clarify that this was "in the '70s"? Of course, there were marches on Washington in the '70s, and every decade since, but I feel like that phrase—without any additional context—implies the 1963 March, no? Those quibbles aside, I enjoyed the show again today. I agree that Bill's unapologetic selfishness is fun and the actor has that charisma. I'm not sure how I feel about Dani at this point, but I like the fact that I'm grappling with what are clearly deliberate choices to depict someone who can be "too much" (as opposed to the way many characters on the other remaining soaps have literally done too much on my TV screen at this point for me to indulge any of their current drama). Haley had no business bringing those cookies or most any of the other things she's done in the last two episodes to try to ingratiate herself, but I feel somewhat badly for her even if I don't for the life of me understand the whole gated community/country club aspiration. Nicole continues to be the soap heroine we've been lacking for decades, and I too like her rapport with her husband. And I'm intrigued by Martin and his husband after this episode, even with the trope of the gay couple being the ones who adopted a bunch of kids, in no small part because I was completely floored to learn that HE is the source of whatever dirt Bill has on Vernon.

It is amazing. Also, seeing the number of variations on "good morning," I think that's right about a nod to ATWT.

I thought we were supposed to think he was naked under the apron at first too, but he was just wearing jeans with no shirt. Other than that, their scenes really were completely boring. I certainly didn't care that it was her first day as a nurse, or even about this hospital where nobody else central to the main stories seems to work. I'm going to hold off for now on saying it was bad acting; maybe I just wanted to get back to the Duprees, which I very much did and that's a good thing. They should have just had the

The one substantive thing about the core characters that I will even bother noting based on the pilot alone is the fact that Nicole got the first scene. Based on what I've seen in the ads of the surrounding footage, I just assumed that was going to be Tamara Tunie driving through the gates - which I wouldn't have minded/questioned at all. But I think it's cool that, to the extent there is one point of view in an ensemble show like this, they are giving us the most relatable (at least of the core family) female character's POV: the type of character that has become an increasingly thankless role on soaps. Someone said upthread that TT already seems like she's been developing Anita for decades, which is true, but I would say DD also gives every impression that she's been playing a complicated but true blue soap heroine for the last 15 years (picking up seamlessly where she left off when OLTL stupidly threw her over).

I really appreciate that they added that in, even if it was very obviously added in, after the fact. We know they started filming just before Election Day. I'm glad we're not pretending we don't know these characters' political leanings. I look forward to seeing how that is handled when we get further in - to scripts that were written more recently.

Thank you for this. The exposition was a lot, but I know MVJ of all writers can pen beautiful dialogue. If she's choosing to prioritize certain things for the premiere, I can live with that. Pilots are rough, even in other genres that are introducing a fraction of this many characters, and unless I'm blanking this still makes for only a handful of pilots episodes of hourlong daytime soaps (along with Texas, the SBs, and Passions). None of those shows lasted a decade, so I guess you could say there is no successful template. I care about the characters, the core actors are doing good work, and I want to see what happens next. That's a success in my book.

My better half and I subscribed for a few years to watch The Good Fight and Evil. We were always years behind on the former—and ultimately gave up on the latter—because we spent more time trying to get it to play on our TV than we did watching. Comcast and/or Apple always seemed to be sabotaging it. We tried the app that came preloaded on the cable box, Apple TV, and even projecting from the computer display; there was always some glitch. He won't be watching BTG, so I'll just stream it on my phone/laptop. The one lasting improvement I found when I watched GH last year for the first time in decades was the ability to stream it with no ads via Hulu. Where was my iPhone 30 years ago?

Hear, hear! BTG was one of the only things I was looking forward to in 2025, and it's already been a long year for me, personally and otherwise. But I am still so excited for this. MVJ is one of the only soap writers still with us whom I would be excited to see get an opportunity like this. Despite my fears about what's left of the industry and the broader climate, everything I've seen from Val Jean and the other creatives so far gives me hope. I have spent some down time this weekend catching up on this entire thread. I took tomorrow off from work, and will be watching the premiere in real time. And I will likely be subscribing to Paramount Plus afterward.

She really is. Something to look forward to in 2025: a new daytime soap opera, no less. Who would have thought? It's so nice checking in on the latest developments. I have virtually no faith left in this industry, or some of the parties involved, but I can't help but hope that somehow she'll be able to do her thing and it will work out.

The soap hits keep coming. My heart breaks for Lynn Herring, in parts for reasons that are unique to soaps and admittedly weird - she's practically broken my heart just by playing grief on screen, so the thought of her going through this for real just seems horrific.

Helen...what a lousy year this has been. That's all I've got.

Oh yeah, I just figured the changes in both the first and last names were all part of the family trees MVJ is building out in her bible - not directly related, insofar as Dupree was presumably not Anita's birth name, but an indication that she's thinking about such things.

What incredible news about TT. Am I the only one who liked the name "Betty" for the character, though? Admittedly, I was probably stuck in a bit of a time loop, forgetting that would have been a more popular nickname a couple of generations before hers. And don't get me wrong: I like Anita as well, and the implication that MVJ is thinking about the family tree and adjusting names accordingly, as @DramatistDreamer noted. It makes me think of how the Ryan's Hope bible was rumored to go back generations to Ireland at the turn of the (previous) century. I also wouldn't have minded the presumably jettisoned "Rosalind" (and possible homage to Cash). I also thought DD did good work and was a delightful presence on OLTL, even with often (and ultimately) thankless material, so that news makes me really happy as well. I was admittedly picturing Morgan as "Betty" (at least, once I remembered time - see above), but I think you're right. Specifically, it might have been difficult for some viewers to accept her playing a main character who's not as nice (I hope) as Angie. I suspect part of what made it possible for Beverlee McKinsey (aside from being BM, and I'd put Morgan in the same very top tier of daytime actresses) to create a second iconic P&G soap character was that she had played the character who was objectively less sympathetic first. No AW/GL viewers could have been credibly outraged at Alex doing something that would have been beneath Iris. (At least, not until MD's Alex was revealed as a drug kingpin or whatever, but by then AW had long since moved the Overton window by leaving Iris to rot in prison as a violent felon.) I'd still like to see DM in a recurring role or short arc - or even as the matriarch of another core family (is there another?). Maybe she could play the gay son's mother-in-law, who has a complicated history with Anita? Yes, I hope the show devotes significant attention to the characters on the other side of the Gates as well.

💗 Thank you for sharing that. It's weird how detached from Sonny/MB I've felt during my brief return to watching GH, when the show somehow still centers around him. From a story standpoint, I concede Sonny should have been written as the villain he naturally evolved into and/or had a memorable final act decades ago, but at this point I don't see that happening. I liked the idea of what PM seemed to be doing, with characters like Anna and Laura questioning their past loyalty to him even though I knew the tampered meds would eventually become an excuse to go back to status quo and I would have been disappointed even if it hadn't been so slapdash. As for MB, it makes me sad to hear what he's going through, in the way that only a veteran soap cast member (which he now is) can affect a complete stranger. I had what I cannot deny was a tween crush on him. At the same time, I still believe he did really strong work as Sonny for some years there. And as far as I know, he's still a relatively benign BTS figure (I hope I'm not wrong about that, and admittedly the bar is low compared to what some of his colleagues have gone viral for). I don't know what more to say, except I hope he's okay and wish him all the best, whatever that looks like for him.

Last night I watched parts of Friday's episode on Hulu out of curiosity for Lucky, and then I read the comments in the GH thread. And I realized I'm even more non representative of someone who's going to watch a daytime soap on a daily basis now than I thought when I last posted in this thread last week. If the ratings had actually dropped dramatically enough that GH was in (more) danger—and if these changes buy them more time—then I genuinely wish them luck (although at this point the industry is kind of the boy who cried wolf). Clearly Mulcahey was never going to be compatible, although why they didn't stick with what was "working"(?) is mind-boggling. That said, it's not for me, and I don't get the plaudits at all. The dialogue has deteriorated even more than it had by the time PM's name was still in the credits but he clearly wasn't around to edit scripts, which I don't get - wasn't Korte the script editor in the Labine era? There may be more drama, but none of it is compelling to me because a) we've seen it all before and b) like on most of the remaining soaps, we've established that no GH plot development—no matter how decisive or what viewers saw with their own eyes—is lasting. I'm not sure how or if I could ever invest in an entire story from start to finish again at this point - but maybe some scenes at least, like I did this spring. The stuff at the graveyard was dreadful all around in my book. I will acknowledge that the direction of Kristina's pregnancy story when Mulcahey was around seemed regressive, and for all I know, maybe that was entirely his vision. As much as I love a lot of material he wrote, he wrote some of the key scenes of some of soaps' most notorious pre-millennial pregnancy stories (although wasn't he at least gone by the time Sonny shot Carly while she was in labor?). This story just seems like all of the ugliest parts of the previous six months dialed up a notch—Kristina loudly declaring "my baby" in front of anyone who'll listen without a second thought, TJ and Molly both policing her pregnancy decisions and the story outcome essentially justifying that judgment—now in the key of gruesome and morbid. As for Lucky, I realized I didn't even care what this cliffhanger would lead to today...been there, done that (for all I know, his captor is working for Faison, who's somehow in league with Pikeman or whoever). I was actually hoping Lucky would have scenes with characters he knows, which again could have been interesting to me than how he got into/will get out of this latest jam. Anyway, it was a surreal blast from the past for me to watch GH regularly again, after all this time, in this year when I definitely needed some escape. Over and out.

Sorry, I don't think I'd seen that info, and/or perhaps hadn't been paying too much attention to those details until I read of the setting and some of the character descriptions. I still think the timeline is unfortunate for what I hope will be a smart political drama, in that these characters won't know who the president is when we meet them. At the risk of asking another dumb question, and I swear I Googled it but couldn't find an answer, do we even know the exact premiere date yet? Presumably it will be a Monday, and looking at the calendar for next year, both Inauguration Day and January 6th fall on Mondays... Anyway, hopefully the show will kick off with something apolitically dramatic enough to justify that none of these characters are talking about that, and in a few weeks, at least, the script writers can start to sprinkle in references to current-ish events. It would have been awesome to have "Betty's" first scene be the fitting for her dress to the Inaugural Ball, and maybe there's a way to script such a scene without knowing if/why she would be attending???

I finally finished watching Mulcahey's credited episodes (since the news that he was out, I've been struggling to keep up on a rolling basis before they expired on Hulu). I agree with most of this, although I can't say for sure about his capacity for plotting/spectacle because I don't believe he he ever got a chance. That could very well be, but the stories that were being set up disappeared for weeks on end, and clearly did not end as planned. I'm not sure how any writer could maintain a compelling pace with a cast this large, presumably with competing guarantees. I'll concede that none of the stories that were taking shape in the past six months were very groundbreaking. Was that on Mulcahey? I don't know. At this point, I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt for that, not least because all of the remaining soaps have had such dated approaches for ages. I also know once upon a time, Mulcahey used what limited power he had as a script writer to push the envelope in positive ways, including with throwaway dialogue and short-term characters that validated my existence at a time when I was very young and that was virtually nonexistent on TV. Anyway, I guess I'm weird because I definitely wasn't watching for the plots. I was curious to see what he'd do/be allowed to do, and I still have an attachment to some of the characters and Port Charles as a community. The show did seem to be getting back to that community feel, like you said, and it was nice to listen in on some meaningful conversations among old friends. I'll miss that. I did have a glimmer of hope that at this point GH wouldn't have rocked the boat if they weren't committed to letting Mulcahey do something more than that. I thought after years and years of stable (if staid) regimes at the remaining soaps, maybe TPTB had at least finally learned what I could have told them 25 years ago: that disrupting story momentum on a daily soap just for the sake of change will probably do more harm than good. Clearly not.